Jeff Xu's Golden Age gets in on city love affair
SARAH DANCKERT AND GINA RUSHTON
THE AUSTRALIAN
NOVEMBER 07, 2013 12:00AM
SHANGHAI'S young-gun developer Jeff Xu has lodged plans for a 75-storey tower on Elizabeth Street in the Melbourne CBD in further testament to China's love affair with the city's apartment market.
If approved, the tower will become the largest apartment building in the CBD and the second-tallest in the greater city area after the hulking Eureka Tower in Southbank.
Mr Xu's Golden Age Development Group this month applied to the Victorian Planning Minister's office for permission to build a soaring tower that would hold about 600 apartments.
The project is estimated to have an end value of about $250 million. Located at 452-472 Elizabeth Street, the apartment tower will be built on a site that houses a Drummond Gold shop on the corner of Franklin Street.
Golden Age Development's 75-storey outing will be located in western reaches of the CBD, which recently has seen a rush of landmark projects.
See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/property/jeff-xus-golden-age-ge...
Some quick mock ups by me based on TP drawings, which were somewhat vague (the vertical fins which cascade down the facade are a combination of green and silver but the drawings weren't clear in articulating the breakdown):

Pictured left is the first published image of a landmark 75-level skyscraper Planning Minister Matthew Guy has been asked to approve at the top of town.
Chinese developer Golden Age is seeking to replace the Drummond Golf building at 452-472 Elizabeth Street, at the north-east corner of Franklin Street, with the complex, which will include 622 flats but just 163 car park bays.
The tower is earmarked to rise from just a 932-square-metre block.

Nice tower.Interested to see more of how articulated the podium is though, there's a chance to play off the human scale nature of the western side of the street and markets and improve on what's currently a boring large single tenancy.

The render obviously lacks a lot of detail, nonetheless it's very promising. Not really comfortable with the lack of setback to Elizabeth street that so many of the current crop towers have.
Thanks again for posting it, the info provided on urbanmelbourne continues to be first rste.

Sorry but that render is fake. Where are all the window's mullions/transoms? And that southern glazzing won't receive as much light as the above render. See how the Elenberg Fraser had rendered with a few sunlight sparkles?....well obviously it's not going to turn out anything like that.

Policy, Culture & Opinion

The New Urban Agenda was officially adopted in Quito, Ecuador in the last plenary of the Habitat III conference. The agenda provides a 20-year “roadmap” to guide sustainable urban development globally. The text of the New Urban Agenda itself was agreed well before Habitat III at the UN General Assembly in September, during an extraordinary informal negotiation session that lasted for more than 30 hours.

Advertisement

Visual Melbourne

Melbourne’s architectural landscape is a wonderful juxtaposition of modern and Victorian architecture. Although the CBD has been peppered with many skyscrapers, its historical structures have won Melbourne the title of “Australia’s most European city”.

Transport & Design

Melbourne’s tram network may hold the key to providing the dense network of high frequency rapid transport that would provide world class connectivity in the inner-city and CBD. Melbourne and New York are very different cities. Drawing too close a parallel between any two cities can be a folly; however New York and Melbourne share some near similarities where it counts.

Sustainability & Environment

Timber mid-rise buildings are becoming the preferred choice for many stakeholders in Melbourne, due to a combination of factors, including cost-effectiveness, liveability, ease and efficiency of construction. Within the recent National Construction Code change, Deemed-To-Satisfy provisions allow mid-rise timber construction for buildings up to 25 metres “effective height” (typically, eight storeys).